It's Not Cricket, Allen Stanford

In early 2007, Allen Stanford was asked why he was risking millions of dollars in a new cricket league in the Caribbean without any tangible hope of returns. "It all depends on how you look at a million dollars," he said. "What looks like a lot of money to you isn't to me. What seems like a risk to you isn't one for me."

It summed up Stanford's image in the cricketing world: an impresario who wasn't shy of pumping in big money. He cared little for the genteel sport played by amateurs in the English countryside; cricket, he insisted, was serious business. Some saw him as a messiah who had the financial clout to revolutionize the sport; others considered him a showman dabbling in kitsch.

Stanford didn't just burst onto the cricket scene. The story goes that when he stepped off the plane in Antigua in 1990 and saw airport workers playing cricket in a pasture, he vowed to build them a stadium. He made good on his promise 15 years later and beamed that a packed Stanford Cricket Ground would have the same feel as "Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve, a World Championship fight and a family reunion put into one."

He couldn't have timed his Antigua adventure better. One of cricket's most dominant themes in the '90s was the decline of standards in the Caribbean. The West Indies team, made up of players from disparate islands, were near-invincible in the late '70s and throughout the '80s, but slid gradually before hitting rock bottom in the middle of this decade. Cracks in the administration ran deep; finances were running dry.

Stanford wholeheartedly embraced cricket's new bastardized version, Twenty20, where games finished in three hours--as opposed to the statelier length that is the staple of the game's caricature in American imagination. In October 2005, Sir Allen, as he was called by then, announced a $28 million pan-Caribbean tournament, with a million-dollar prize for the champions.

To put things in context, the losing finalist in the World Cup--the game's biggest event--received the same amount a few months later. Proportionally, the inaugural Stanford tournament was far more popular, user-friendly and exciting than the World Cup, which, too, was held in the Caribbean.

While he was widely celebrated in the region, Stanford was yet to win over the rest of the cricketing world. His two attempts to invite international teams to Antigua fell through and he was initially far removed from the international cricketing power struggle between England, where the game originated, and India, currently cricket's economic epicenter.

But in June 2008, he stunned everyone with his Texan cowboy spirit. Lord's, the most hallowed cricket venue in the world--an institution established more than 220 years ago--witnessed a scene straight out of Hollywood as Stanford's jet-black helicopter swooped down on the field.

He chest-bumped the England board's chief executive before unveiling a Perspex box containing $20 million in $50 bills to officially announce the winner-take-all game between England and West Indies at the end of the year. To top it off, he said Test cricket, the game's most challenging format and one revered in the Lord's corridors, was "boring."

There was a mixed response in the media, but it was generally accepted that the English board, in an attempt to quell India's increasing control over the game, was too hasty in leaping into bed with Stanford.

The criticism got louder over the next few months, but all hell broke loose at a practice game a few days before the big game: Stanford was spotted on TV with his arm around two women, one of whom was an England players girlfriend, as another player's pregnant wife sat on his knee. The London-based Times was outraged that cricket had become the "new pornography."

The big game turned out to be a hopelessly one-sided affair. Stanford's Superstars simply blew England away. Stanford, who had insisted on an intense six-week training program, deserved part of the credit, but it will probably be remembered as his final fling.

Soon there were murmurs about the champions being persuaded to reinvest their money with Stanford. A month later, he closed his cricket office in Antigua and wound up his board. He had allegedly promised to invest $100 million toward cricket in the region from 2008 through 2011.

That's small change compared with the kind of economic devastation Antigua is bracing itself for. A ghastly number of job losses are expected and the issue is set to be hotly debated before next month's elections.

One can almost hear a collective sigh from a small set of cab drivers outside the Antigua airport. The group used to wait for Stanford's visitors to land, knowing full well that they would choose the two-minute cab drive over the five-minute walk. Some made more money in these jaunts than they would if they were driving around the island all day. There will be no one to flash the cash now. The same could be said for cricket in the entire region.